Google Video to Internet: "No Porn for You!"

[Jazz Ensemble rehearsing tonight at FCC. Spent most of the first two hours riding levels to keep the vocalist audible, and now I'm up and down between sets as the band rehearses.]

A day or two after I posted about the "Wizards of Winter" video, I discovered Google Video. Finally! A search engine that makes it quick and simple to find funny cats, Parkour footage, Family Guy clips, and videos of diet soda/candy experiments set to geek-punk!

The service is still in beta for now, and I've noticed two odd things about it so far:

First, if you search for a term, any term, and then click the "Refresh" button on your browser, you'll get a page of almost entirely different results. I can only guess that this has something to do the ranking system that they're using for video searches.

The second odd thing I've noticed is that Google seems to be preventing the most obvious use of this technology. It's no secret, the Googlemen specfically forbid it in the Google Video Upload Program Policy. It's even sparked some minor controversey.

Wizards of Winter

[Working on Corky St. Clair's Christmas Pageant reahearsal at the college tonight. Two hours in and I've played one song, three times, so far. This could be a long night.]

One of the services that the company for which I work provides is concert lighting. And I guess it's for that reason that one of our vendors forwarded the following (5mb .wmv format) video to my boss.

http://www.lookatentertainment.com/v/v-1810.htm

Now I know that everyblogger else has already linked to this video but I don't care, because it's that freakin' cool. Debate online is over whether it's a real video of a real display (programmed by somebody with too much free time and a serious hard-on for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra) or a faked stop-motion sequence with the soundtrack added.

I have to admit, I have my doubts about it's veracity. The soundtrack was obviously added in post-production. Also, the lack of any actual movement apart from the lights flashing on and off does lend the video some qualities of a George Pal Puppetoon. Something as simple as a car driving by or a person walking down the street would have gone a long way to making things more believable.

But on the other hand, there's something about this DIY-meets-Vegas display that appeals to the geeky board-op inside me. This is the sort of thing that guys like me look at and, whether it's faked or not, we immediately begin compiling a bill of materials, writing linked cues, and debating if we need to use SMPTE to coordinate the music and lights.

I'm sure the Snopes-dogg will inevitably weigh in and settle things, but it doesn't really matter in the long run. As a friend of a friend of my sister once said, "if it ain't true, it oughta be."

Lunch Time Game Time

I work in an office. Granted, it's not your typical office with a steno pool and men wearing suits and whatnot but it's still an office. One of the benefits of working in an office is that you get about 30 minutes every work day during which it is acceptable to eat food and/or surf the internet. We call this daily ritual "the Lunch Hour."

[Why the average Lunch Hour is only 30 minutes long is a mystery to me. I can only guess that it's some sort of cosmic balance for the fact that "Happy Hour" runs from 5-7.]

Not surprisingly, I like to spend at least some of my lunch hour looking at non-work-related websites. However, there's only so many times one can check one's personal webmail, and I've refined my webcomic reading down to about a half-dozen that I look at regularly. This often leaves me with anywhere from 15-20 minutes left in the hour and nothing to click.

That's why I was delighted to find Jay Bibby's site. "jay is games" is a regularly updated blog that reviews mostly Flash-based web games. Some are ports or remixes of classic arcade games, while others are completely new creations. Either category of game makes for an entertaining 20-30 minutes, but I find myself drawn more and more to the new stuff.

Take "Ray Ray Parade" for example, a simple puzzle game in which the "pieces" are cartoon schoolboys that look like the offspring of Chairman Mao and a Precious Moments figurine. The basic concept is simple, click on any one of the li'l commies and he'll stand up. If any of his immediate neighbors are crouching, they'll stand up too; if those comrades are already standing, however, they'll crouch back down. Get all of them standing at once and they'll flash their tummies at you and scamper off the screen. You're graded based on how many clicks it takes you to get through 5 levels. (The best I've done so far is a "B.")

Jay's site is, quite literally, a treasure trove. I suspect I'll be able to occupy my lunch hours for at least the rest of 2005 just digging through the archives. Check it out during lunch if you work in an office with computers and not too many rules about the Internet.

[Edit: Thanks, Jay, for helping me fix my links!]